Casting Call
by SotF
Summary: Memories of a past life change Xander in a way that was unexpected. Chaos returns to a universe where the Ultimate Lifeform was cast in a role he wished he had not.


**AN:** As far as I know, this is a One Shot, it may end up being continued if I get more ideas as I write it. But this is mainly a response to a birthday request from a friend, you know who you are if your reading this, so yeah! All you asked for was a fic with Xander and Shadow, so I hope this works for you.

I just bought a Dreamcast (yes, it's old and discontinued, but it's one of the three Sega systems I didn't buy when it was released the others being a Mastersystem and the Saturn) and I'm gathering games for it. But this idea came through from various parts of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.

**xXx**

Memories, memories were something that he knew was the key change in his mind. Somehow, memories of another life had become a part of him and his entire view of everything had changed.

Swirling through his head were now four sets of memories. The first was that of a relatively moronic hyena, and the second came from his brief possession by a soldier on Halloween. Then came his own, and finally came the mystery, an entity that proclaimed itself to be the worlds Ultimate Lifeform.

But he felt something strange as he looked at his relationships with his so called friends. They had been systematically trying to exclude him from trying to save the world. His memories saw someone in a similar situation.

Buffy seemed to take the same role that Sonic had in his little group. The one who would lead the way into the thick of the fight. Willow seemed to be the magical heavy hitter and genius in an eerily disturbing mix of Tails and Knuckles. Faith obviously matched his old occasional ally Rouge, in more ways than most would think of. Giles seemed to fill in most of the roles of Big and the rest of Tails support.

And what was he left with? Nothing like his old one, that was for sure. He had been corralled into the position of the annoying occasional sidekick and wannabe love interest. In several ways it felt degrading to his old selfs ego that seemed to prop up his own. By some sick twist of fates hand, he'd been cast in the role of Amy!

He who had been as fast as the blue speedster, as strong as the knucklehead, almost as smart as fox boy, and far more devious than Eggman, was forced into a role that had been played by a lovesick thirteen year old girl who didn't have a clue as to what was safe or not.

How he missed the raw speed as blasting down a highway with people gunning for him, complete and totally insane courses of action that were taken with the sole reason being mainly just the adreneline rush and to prove his power and skill. His quest for vengance had always guided him until he learned all of what she said, when he sacrificed himself to save the world from the mess that had been caused by aftereffects of the first ARK incident.

But he had managed to build a few things that helped him work towards regaining what he had before that death. The damage he took in fighting demons wasn't to bad, but his human form was rather frail in comparison to what the black, crimson, and white furred hedgehog had.

With help from a few out of town friends, he'd managed to cobble togather a pair of jetboots and a nice pair of guantlets similar to the ones he used to have. He was naturally fast, and had a higher endurance than anyone save a slayers and a handful of demon species, but it still wasn't anywhere near as high as his used to be, not to mention his lack of any seriously high strength. Not nearly high enough to deal with anything like he remembered going toe to toe with. Especially the elite police unit known as GUN.

Another thing was that he was beginning to plan out a way to have a new set of Chaos Emeralds formed for his use. Part of what he remembered was that the originals had been made by a 'God of Chaos' that owed the ancient Echidnas a great debt for some deed that went unmentioned in the histories he had found and read. And he had a few options to work from to get the concession of the emeralds for his use.

But for now, he was still in the planning stage of his grand plan to show them just what Shadow could do when he put his mind to it.

**xXx**

It was somewhat odd what his request from Janus had been, a simple retrieval of a book from a Watcher storehouse in San Diego. The item had aparently been something that Ethan Rayne had somehow managed to steal to use in his Halloween stunt and it got left behind and found by Giles, who turned it in. But when he checked the security, he had found something that would have impressed Rouge.

At the moment, he was dangling from a helicopter as it circled the city, and he waited until it crossed over the top of the building he needed and spun, kicking off the underside of the chopper and smashing through a skylight an instant later. Rolling, he triggered the jet blasts from his boots and landed in a crouch as the alarms sounded.

His mind began a mental countdown as he smashed through the door to the stairs and leaped down the center of the stairwell. Ten floors later, he grabbed the railing and swung in, knocking the door off its frame as he moved.

"So, nothing to it," he chuckled just before he heard a hiss and the stairwell began to seal itself off at each floor, "Shit!"

Pausing for a moment, Xander calculated the time it would take for guards to reach the research room he'd just broken into before beginning his search for the ancient tome.

Moments of desperate searching later, he heard one of the doors on the level crash open and footsteps.

"Must go faster," he chanted to himself as he urged more speed from his muscles, hoping to nab the book so that he could make use of his trump card before it was to late, "Must go faster!"

A click warned him an instant before gunfire flooded the room, and he was on the move frantically dodging hot lead.

Then he went vertical and landed atop the lights with a sort pulse of the boots and started running down them as he tried to figure out the location of the book he needed.

His eyes suddenly saw what he was after near the security guards moving in to attempt to take him down.

"Pathetic humans," he chuckled as he focused, a trail of rings becomming easily visible before him that led to the ancient tome and blasted off like a hurricane right at the startled troopers and grabbed it, sending several flying in all directions like bowling pins, "Not quite a match for the Ultimate Life Form!"

He pulled an early 'gift' from Janus out, the first of the eight emeralds he would acquire, the seven Chaos Emeralds and one Master Emerald.

The glowing green stone seemed to suprise the guards as the former hedgehog gripped the gem in both hands.

"CHAOS CONTROL!"

And thus he was gone in a flash of emerald light, leaving not a trace save for the havoc he'd caused.

**xXx**

Materializing in the chamber he had agreed to meet the divine being in, Xander felt weak, the power to pull off what he had easily was something his human form couldn't handle very well, and the pain was just his bodies way of telling him that it wasn't a good idea to pull some of what he had without being prepared to face the consequences.

He saw the entity appear a half of an instant before he passed the leather bound volume to him, "Now then, let's get this going, I need the rest and your other offer, I want to be able to retake my Shadow form."

"I have a better offer for you," the entity chuckled, "How would you like to have the power of the emeralds contained within you, it would give you a definate advantage."

"What would it cost me?"

"Nothing more than what you have already paid, the idiot mage's work did use my power on you, and well, let's just say, idiots don't ammuse me."

"So, what's next?"

"You get true power, and Shadow," the god said with a smirk, "You're unique brand of chaos was something that was always fun to watch before the straight arrows that try to control this world decided to attempt to co-opt you for their plans."

"Well, any other benefits to this that I should know about?"

"Actually, the only thing I can actually think of is that you don't risk getting the Emeralds stolen like they so often were in your old world."

"So, you just want me to cause some of my normal fun, and we're even?"

"Exactly!"

"Deal," Xander said with a smirk as a dark expression filled his features, "And let's show the moronic Powers why they should never have messed with me."

And as the powers gathered, Janus grinned as he envisioned the absolute chaos that would be quickly smashing plans of both active sides like a tornado.

Xander felt the power flow through him, changing him to give him access to his hedgehog form, and he reveled in it. His powers had returned in full, something that gave him hope for fun times ahead, and full acceleration was back in his grasp.

**xXx**

Shadow stood atop the school as he waited for the fireworks to start. He'd been setting things up for causing a bit of havoc around town for the unveiling of his true power.

Half a second of thought later he leaped from the roof and onto the gate and from there to the top of a police cruiser, and so the insanity began as he waved in the window, causing the cop to spin out of control just before the ultimate lifeform was blasting down the street faster than the cars could go.

With a simple flick of the wrist, he activated the olice band scanner connected to his headset and listened to a pursuit being declared, and the game had begun.

The call of sirens reached him as he kicked it up a notch and shot between two of them and onto the freeway at a hundred and fifty as he blasted through traffic with police cruisers in hot pursuit.

Swerving cars added a certain challenge as he started bouncing between cars like a deranged pinball.

"Janus," he whispered, "I hope you're enjoying this one!"

He leaped atop a semi's trailor and dashed down it and vaulted off the far end to grab onto the door handle of the police helicopter. Trowing a salute, he released as the startled pilot lost control and the black, crimson, and white hedgehog hovered, jet boots holding position before he triggered a light speed dash to skim the road below him.

His smirk expanded as he heard the pileup begin behind him as he went straight to full speed, bluring as the pavement exploded from the shockwave just before he went offroad, three cruisers still in pursuit.

Instead of staying on the ground, he went into the trees like a black rocket with leaves and branches flying in all directions as a spin dash shattered trees like toothpicks. The debris eliminated one of the pursuers, and another went out of control, skidding into another tree.

The last was built for the chase it was giving the hedgehog, who was exhilerated by the excitement he was having. It was the most wonderful feeling to be back in action, and all of the widespread panic he could cause with ease, forget the morals of things, excitement was key.

He was the loner, the living hurricane that seemed to easily cause more devistation without trying than most could in a lifetime.

The high speed typhoon blasted across a lake to lose his last pursuer as music touched his ears and he focused on drawing out the light like he had before, and vanished in a flash of light with a shout, "MYSTIC MELODY!"

**xXx**

Part of him desired to return to the world of Shadow's birth, to see what had happened after his death, but the rest of him was enjoying the sheer ridiculous lack of defenses against the third force.

The first force was quite simply called good, and the second was evil. Opposites that would have been eternally balanced, but where was the fun in that?

The fourth force was the one that would occasionally shift the balance in radical ways, that was the very thing that was true Chaos.

It was the one pure force that was in everything in existance, nothing existed without at least a slight bit of the disruptive force being a part of the fiber of their very being. But then again, he was now unique, he possessed a balance of good and evil, far more so than most living beings, but that was because he had a high level of Chaos energy within him now that it was quite exhilerating.

Shadow focused on the power within him and moulded a bit of the radient energy comming from the emerald power within him into a very useful form as he focused on a vampire that was walking through the streets.

"CHAOS SPEAR!" he yelled as he fired off a stream of emerald bolds of light that turned the bloodsucker into just so much dust.

"I've still got it," he chuckled to himself as he prepared for the chaos to come, with the what he had over heard from the weasle, Faith was in trouble, and he was definately going to teach the watchers a lesson that they would never forget.

And so he vanished again, using his chaos energy once more.

"CHAOS CONTROL!"

**xXx**

A half hour later, the hedgehog was confused about the armaments the Watchers were using. He had expected the morons to be armed with the same archaic junk they forced the Slayer to use, but military grade firearms was something that would make his plans to humiliate them just that much more fun.

He had been only a moment to late in trying to reach Faith before the goon squad did, but he had seen them load one tranked slayer into an ambulance.

"Well, looks like th fun started without me, but then again, I can always show them the idiocy of facing the worlds ultimate lifeform!"

He leaped from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of the vehicle as a grin that promised pain to the ones it was aimed at flashed across his lips. His boots allowing him to easily match speed with the vehicle, as well as begin to catch up.

**xXx**

"Sir," one of the watcher commando's yelled from the passenger seat in th front, "Something's on our tail!"

"What!"

"Whatever the hell it is, it's on foot and catching up!"

"But we're doing sixty!"

"Sir, he's accelerating, what do we do in this type of situation?"

"It's obviously demonic, nothing human can pull that off, take it down!"

**xXx**

Shadow smirked as he neared his target and then the rear doors opened and it vanished.

"How the hell did they get a machine gun into an ambulance?"

He swerved as the weapon opened up in the middle of the freeway.

"CHAOS SPEAR!" he yelled as he released a series of energy strikes, but the vehicle jerked and managed to avoid the blast that shredded the road like tissue paper, "How do you like my heavy weapons!"

**xXx**

"What the fuck was that!" the driver yelped as he saw the wave of debris fall over the stolen ambulance, "No magic I know of could do that!"

"Sir, whatever the hell that is," the gunner yelled up, "It's catching up and I can't see the thing well enough to hit it!"

"Shoot it!" the leader yelped as a second burst of emerald light shattered a parked car beside them, "Flood the street with bullets if you have to!"

"I'm trying!"

**xXx**

A purely evil look emenated from Shadow as he decided to unleash something more powerful than the fools had ever seen in their pathetic lives. He felt raw power flood through his veins as he drew on the full power of the emralds within him, making that energy manifest within him.

Raw chaos energy brushed through his fur and he seemed to radiate light, a living lightbulb as a sphere of raw chaotic power spread outwards in all directions. Destruction would come swiftly for those who stood in his way.

**xXx**

"Holy," the gunner stammered as he brought his weapon to bare on the light, "Sir, we have a problem here!"

"Keep it down!" the driver snarled, "I can't see the damned road through the light!"

**xXx**

As the light died down to a more managable level, Shadow felt the changes that had occurred.

Silver fur replaced black and gold replaced crimson as he hovered midair, an aura that matched the color of the master emerald surrounded him as he raised a hand to send a wave of energy that deflected the bullets away from him before he accelerated.

Super Shaodw had been born into the world in a maelstrom of energy.

The shockwaves shattering glass as he seemed to materialize before the ambulance.

"Pathetic humans," he chuckled as he smashed the engine with a simple strike, "Did you really think that you could stop me?"

Bullets bounced harmlessly off of him as he stood there laughing before using chaos control to warp inside the wreck, appearing between the four Brits.

"You know," he laughed, "If you losers hadn't tried to shoot me, I would have simply left you here, but you didn't wo you're going to end up learning some very harsh lessons."

"What are you?" the gunner stammered.

"Shadow the Hedgehog," the being laughed, "And as for how to punish you..."

The world warped around them, leaving the wreck behind, and they materialized elsewhere.

"And you are about to learn just what the military does when a group of armed foreign nationals shows up in the middle of one of their bases," he continued before vanishing again, just as a spotlight shone on the four.

"Well shit," the leader stammered as he threw down his weapons.

**xXx**

Shadow reappeared in the wreck and walked over to the drugged slayer with a frown as he removed the straps they had used.

A part of him saw her as one of the few beings he had seen as an equal, something that not even the blue hedgehog had managed to do. He had never trusted the white furred one, but she had his respect with the sheer audacity of her plan. He could have killed her when he found out that she had been trying to stop him, and he could have killed her easily. She wasn't as strong or as fast as he was, but something about her had impressed him and so he let her live.

It had turned out to be something that had other consequences, it had allowed him to remember the rest of what she had told him. What Maria had said to him before he had been ejected in the escape pod when she had been murdered by GUN.

The total destruction aboard the ARK when the fools had decided that the weapon they had ordered created was something to precious to allow anyone other than them to know about. In the end he had done what the girl he loved as a daughter had asked of him. That was what had both freed and killed him, and now he was alive once more with far more power than he had ever held.

But this life, was it worth the pain he was reliving as he thought of what he had done before. He had been the cause of much destruction that in the end served no purpose beyond destruction. That was not what he was to do, chaos was not destruction, it was what allowed choice, what gave free will, what gave the world color rather than just black and white.

But his mind flashed back to the girl who now lay before him, one he now knew would be crucial in what was to come. He knew that the mayor was evil and what he had planned, it was one of the few things that Janus had told him directly when the god decided he needed someone to talk to.

The brief flare of chaotic energy he had used was a warning to the mayor, the rest would come when he focused on all of it, it was the last time he planned on being in the dimension, but first he had to make sure the dark haired Slayer was safe.

He thought for a moment before deciding where to go and activated yet another chaos control, warping him and her out of the state just as the police arrived at the scene. It was time to implement the plan he had.

**xXx**

Mayor Wilkins growled as his transformation began, but his attention was diverted by an explosion that ripped through the rear wall, and the raw energy that flooded the room.

"Pathetic," came a low, haunting laugh, "Even those who would give up their very essence, you humans truely are stupid and pathetic creatures."

Super Shadow slowly advanced through the fleeing crowd that moved to avoid him even more than they did the monster on the stage. Vampires that got close were casually destroyed with bursts of raw power.

"I have yet to see anything impressive from those here," Shadow cackled, "Well, except for myself of course."

The chaos powered hedgehog stopped laughing as his burning, crimson eyes focused on the stunned demon before him.

"And to think that you thought yourself invincible," he said with the tone most reserve for speaking to either small children or idiots, "I can easily destroy you, and I will, a one way trip to the sun should be enough and as I'm not a sadistic bastard, it'll be relatively quick and painless."

He drew on the power within and screamed, "CHAOS CONTROL!"

Time and space warped around him and the demon like a hurricane, the light surrounding only the demon as Shadow's smile grew, "You are a weak and pathetic being, and for that, you have been judged, good-bye!"

And then it ended, a smouldering crater sat where the mayor had stood, Snyder mumbling and screaming as he looked at the entity before him that glowed with eldritch might.

"So the troll survived," Shadow whispered in a disapointed tone, "Pity."

He turned and started to walk away as Buffy finally had gathered up the courage to aproach the entity that had singlehandedly terminated the creature they couldn't.

"Who are you!" the blonde roared at him.

The dark hedgehog chuckled slightly as he gave her an apraising glance with a sneer as he released his super form, "Who I am is none of your business."

She took a swing at the black, crimson, and white furred entity, only to see her target blur and find herself smashing into a wall across the room.

"Pathetic," he laughed as he glared at her, "Anyone else want to try to take on the ultimate lifeform?"

"What?" Giles managed to stammer at the being that had casually defeated a slayer without a hint of effort, not to mention the demon he'd destroyed.

"You heard me human," Shadow chuckled, "I guess you should know my true name, I am the worlds Ultimate Lifeform, I am Shadow the Hedgehog!"

With that he vanished in a shower of lights, leaping from the dimsenion with the power of the stored Chaos Emeralds. His mind looking for Station Square and his allies, as well as the powers of the Chaos Emeralds. Then he felt a surge and an impact of raw energy almost as soon as he reached his destination, and he was batted into a maelstrom before entering a new world and hitting the ground.


End file.
